[Sca-cooks] Beef stock

[Johnna Holloway]

There are these:

This is an excerpt from *Le Menagier de Paris*
(France, 1393 - Janet Hinson, trans.)
The original source can be found at David Friedman's website 
<http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Cookbooks/Menagier/Menagier.html>

Subtle Broth from England. Take cooked peeled sweet chestnuts, and as 
many or more hard-boiled egg yolks and pork liver: grind all together, 
mix with warm water, then put through a sieve; then grind ginger, 
cinnamon, clove, grain, long pepper, galingale and saffron to give it 
color and set to boil together.

Veal Broth. Do not wash nor parboil, half cook it on the spit or on the 
grill, then cut it in pieces and fry in fat with a great quantity of 
onions cooked beforehand: then take lightly browned bread or untoasted 
bread crumbs, as otherwise it would be too brown for veal broth; (they 
say that this lightly browned bread is good for hare broth.) And let 
this bread be moistened with beef stock and a little wine or water left 
from cooking peas, and while it is moistening, grind ginger, cinnamon, 
clove, grain of Paradise, and saffron mainly for coloring it yellow, and 
mix with verjuice, wine and vinegar, then grind your bread and put 
through the sieve: and add your spices, and the sieved bread, to the 
cauldron, and put it all on to boil together; and it should be more 
yellow than brown, sharp with vinegar, and full of spices. - And note 
that it needs lots of saffron, and try not to add cloves or cinnamon, as 
they will redden it.

Also a hare broth.

Broth with Meat Strips is made in haste at a supper where there are more 
people than expected. For ten bowls, take twenty strips of the cold meat 
from dinner and from the leg of beef; and let the strips be small like 
slices of bacon, and fry them in fat on the fire on the griddle.

Item, have the yolks of six eggs and a little white wine, and beat them 
together until you are tired, then put with meat stock and old verjuice, 
not new, for it will turn: and boil it all without the meat; and then 
arrange in the bowls, and in each bowl two strips of meat. Some put the 
broth in the bowls, and on a dish, before four people, five meat slices 
and some broth with them; and this is for when there are more people and 
less meat.

Saracen Broth. Skin the eel and cut in little chunks, then sprinkle with 
ground salt and fry in oil; then grind ginger, cinnamon, clove, grain, 
galingale, long pepper and saffron to give color, and verjuice, and boil 
all together with the eels which will make the liaison of themselves.

Le Menagier has some others.

Johnnae



Robin Carroll-Mann wrote:
> So, how did our ancestors make their stocks and broths?  And what
> flavorings (if any) did they add in lieu of tomato paste?
>
> Pondering soup on a cold and snowy evening...
>
>